Friday, Jan 25, 2013    Text size: 

BEAUMONT, Texas — Revenge porn site Texxxan.com has been inoperable for most of the past week after its operators found themselves last week as defendants in a class-action lawsuit over allegedly invading the privacy of more than two dozen female plaintiffs.

While the site says it is down to "traffic overloads and discussions," site operators also make claims in nearly half-dozen paragraphs written to surfers that a large amount of traffic stemming from national media reports have caused capacity issues for the site.  

In rambling statements, Texxxan.com's operators acknowledged that they are "assessing the situation," presumably a lawsuit that seeks class-action status filed by Beaumont, Texas-based attorney John S. Morgan.

Morgan filed the lawsuit on behalf of more than two dozen local women one week ago, asserting that the website violates Texas privacy laws.

"We still find the content including submissions and comments of the site a bit disheartening to an extent due to the controversial contents that may be included but maybe the site provided an outlet for anger that prevented physical violence (this statement will be very controversial but is at least worth thinking about)," the site said. "The framework was simply built as an image submission platform for viewers to use that could have been taken down many different routes, even though we have now seen the main route that it has taken and the controversy it has caused.

"We are now assessing the situation and will do our best to make the best decisions pertaining to this issue that will hopefully benefit all individuals involved etc. Discussions are currently taking place on this matter and we will update everyone as soon as any decisions are made. When all the attention began we came in, shut things down and advised individuals to run a public poll and instructed them how to do so in order to decide whether to relaunch this site or shut it down completely."

The site includes a poll that asks surfers to cast their votes on whether the site should be relaunched.

Morgan told XBIZ this week that he could only speculate why the site is down, but said "this way it will prevent more women from finding themselves on the public portions of the site, and thus cut down on the amount of women still seeking to join the lawsuit."   

He said that much of the nude content on the site, which currently is inoperable, involves stolen content off social networks such as Facebook, as well as photos posted by spurned partners.  The site offered explicit photos of local Texas women by region.

The lawsuit targets hosting site GoDaddy, as well as unidentified operators of Texxxan.com and members and subscribers to the site.

It seeks class-action status and asks for an injunction — temporary and permanent — actual and punitive damages and attorneys fees.